With their heated seats, hidden sensors and warm water cleansing systems, Japanese toilets are used to being the centre of attention in hotel bathrooms, public restrooms and ordinary residences all around the country.

Now its time for their next-of-kin to get an upgrade, with a new machine set to revolutionise toilet paper dispensers, making it possible to automatically cut sheets and even fold the final edge into a neat little triangle for the next person to use.

On long car trips in the U.S., I didn’t really find the prospect of using a highway rest stop bathroom significantly more appealing than just holding it until I got to my destination, whether that meant waiting until the next city or the next state. Honestly, given how filthy a lot of the public toilets were, I was generally happier with a deserted stretch of road or a grove of trees I could pull over near.

In Japan, though, it’s a different story, as this video of a rest stop bathroom shows it to be cleaner and classier than the one in many people’s homes.

Love and music may not have borders, but neither do other universal concepts like the call of nature.

Although Japan is famous for its modern toilet technology (there’s even a museum now), many non-Eastern Asians are often taken aback when they visit the country and have their first encounter with the older, squatting kind. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re a staple in most Japanese schools, parks, and stations.

The fact that there’s such a gap in modern toilet technology got us curious about how toilet models and their degree of upkeep varies worldwide, and fortunately one brave soul has gone through the trouble of filming bathrooms across the globe to answer this very question.Read More

At my old job, my coworkers and I shared bathrooms with a half-dozen or so other companies that had offices in our building. For the most part, the men’s room stayed relatively clean, but about once a week, I’d walk into one of the stalls and find a pile of cigarette ashes on the floor.

Frankly, it was disgusting and exasperating, especially since the building had a smoking lounge. But hey, I guess the perpetrator who couldn’t resist the self-pleasing siren song of simultaneously taking a puff and a dump didn’t see what the big deal was. Here with a handy explanation, though, is some surprisingly wise Japanese bathroom graffiti.